OOPS!

You hear people saying things like "So and so is a good cook, I'm so jealous. I can't cook." If you probe a little further, as I sometimes do, you frequently find out that the person who "can't cook," had a bad experience with a recipe, or a dish turned out wrong, or didn't turn out the way s/he thought it should, and thus, by definition, they can't cook.

My friend Andrew told me some time ago about trying to make pancakes, and how they tasted good, but "they just didn't get brown on one side. What did I do wrong?"

What makes someone think they did something wrong? I try to stress in these blogs that there are so many things that are involved in putting a dish together, that a recipe can only guide you so far. Unfortunately, we get trained, so early, to "FOLLOW DIRECTIONS." So if the recipe says "bake in a 350 degree oven for twenty minutes," that's what we do. Well, what if the oven's thermostat was off? It happens more than you might think. What if the recipe writer were working on a dry day, and it's raining when you cook? Well, your ingredients are going to have more water in them, and it will take longer to cook them. It happens more than you think. Or - one of my favorite examples - what if the recipe says "use apples that are somewhat tart," and you have a taste for things that are sour? Your idea of what is "somewhat tart" is going to be different from what someone who likes sweet apples considers a "somewhat tart" one, and the two of you, making the same dessert, will get different results. Which one is correct? Both of them.

So, there are two lessons here, and then a story. First, is the one I've been stressing: don't treat recipes as the "be all and end all" of cooking. Second, don't be so hard on yourself if it doesn't work the way you thought it was supposed to. Your result may very well be the correct one.

There's an excellent analogy drawn in an essay by Daniel Patterson. He talks about how you might have directions to "drive west for five minutes." Well, what if you run into red lights? Or what if there's a bump that slows you down? Or what if the speed you think you're going at is wrong? Does that make you a bad driver? Of course not.

And as Mr. Patterson observes in his essay "Good cooks make mistakes all the time. They take wrong turns and end up in strange places. Their attention sharpens as they try to figure out where they are and how they got there. Eventually they either reach their original destination or discover that wherever they stumbled into is really the best place to be. Sometimes it's important to get lost."

Amen to that. I think of myself as a good cook. So do a lot of people. But I make mistakes. I make a LOT of mistakes. At thanksgiving, I made a BIG one. I was trying to make some kind of gratin with white potatoes, and chard, but instead of using milk, I used chicken stock. I knew that chicken stock doesn't have the thickening agents that milk does, but I figured that the starch in the potatoes would bind the dish together.


WRONG!!! And in retrospect, what in the name of Buddha was I doing? Yes, there ARE baked casseroles based on broth, called "panades," but they all involve lots of bread to sop up the stuff. So, after an hour of baking, I had a very wet casserole dish filled with lovely slices of potato that had been cooked in chicken stock for so long that they had taken on wonderful flavor, and some very soft, but still vibrant, chard. What I did NOT have was a gratin. What to do?

I fished out the potatoes, and the greens, and I reserved the stock (that would make a good soup later on). Then I piled everything into a baking dish, covered it with bread crumbs and butter, and broiled it for five minutes. INSTANT SUCCESS. And a few days later, the leftovers, blended with an egg, some broccoli, and a little salt, made superb potato "pancakes" alongside of a plate of tuna steak.

You're going to make mistakes. We all will. I won't make a casserole in that fashion again (although I WILL review recipes on panades and my next one will work), but now, I have a new recipe for a baked potato casserole. Maybe when I make it again, I'll cook the potatoes in the stock on the stove, rather than bake it for an hour, but then again, maybe for old times sake, I'll do it the way I did the first time.

NOT!

Difficult Vegetables: Cauliflower

As we head into the cold weather, the "favorite" vegetables of the warm weather are gone. No more green beans, peas, tomatoes, summer squash, or all of the other goodies that people mention when they talk about their favorite vegetables. Now we're left with the "tough stuff," like beets, kale, chard, and the cruciferous ones: cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and that whole category. (Know why they call them "cruciferous?" The flowers of these guys look like little tiny crosses. They DO. I've seen em on cabbage plants and broccoli plants. Really neat).

Winter vegetables have very strong flavors, and they aren't as easy to cook as the summer ones. And all of us have some kind of memory of one or more of them that isn't appealing. I know I have them.

I DO enjoy some of these vegetables, but no one is going to get me to eat brussel sprouts. At least not willingly. I have only liked them ONE way: I had a stir fry once, of shredded sprouts, pecans, apples and maple syrup. That is more like candy than a vegetable, so I can't say that "oh, I had some great brussel sprouts." Not that long ago, at one of our favorite restaurants, the kitchen sent out, on the house, their special brussel sprouts salad. Bravely, I dug in. These were shredded raw sprouts, mixed with enough "stuff" to make it barely palatable to me. I'm sure that it was delicious, like all the food at Barbuto, but it's just not my thing.

Indeed, for years, I had an adversion to cauliflower, and for a while, broccoli. Where the adversion to broccoli came from, I do not know. I had always liked the stuff, but then one day, I woke up and the thought of it, the sight of it, the smell of it, and of course, the taste of it would leave me running to the bathroom to , well.... Then one day, it just disappeared.

I THINK I know where the adversion to cauliflower came from , and I think many people share the same adversion: SMELL. When you cook any of these cruciferous vegetables, you can get a really, truly nasty smell in the kitchen and your home, that lingers. That's the sulfur in these vegetables. It's also what makes them somewhat indigestable to some people. Not being able to digest a veggie is reason enough not to eat it, but the odor problem CAN be solved. Trust me. I got over my cauliflower problems, and I believe that you can too, if you follow a few little guidelines.

First, when you buy cauliflower, or cabbage, or any of these vegetables, you have to divorce yourself from the American concept that "bigger is better." It's not. The larger varieites of these vegetables will have more "aroma" than the smaller ones, and it's not proportional. In other words, it's not the case that a two pound head of cauliflower is going to have twice the odor of a one pound head. Uh uh. It's more pronounced than that, because in addition to getting bigger, the vegetable is older. Older vegetables have more "aromatics." Why do you think French women, those masters of soups, use older carrots in their stock instead of young ones? So go for the smaller specimens.

Second, when you buy them, plan on using them sooner rather than later. These veggies all store well, but that doesn't mean you should push them to the back of the fridge, and use them when you "get to them." The longer they store, the more water they will lose, and the more concentrated the sulfurs. More concentrated sulfurs means a stronger aroma.

And finally, what to me is the KEY point. When you cook these vegetables, use PLENTY of water. WAY MORE than you think you'll need. What I believe happens is that as the veggies cook, the aromas vaporize. If they can dissolve into the water, they won't get into the air. And you won't smell them. And you'll be able to enjoy the veggies without having to deal with, what my grandmother used to call "underwear odor."

When I was a kid, cauliflower was white. In big heads. These days, you seem to be able to buy it in a new color every year. Now we have golden cauliflower, and purple cauliflower, and I think there's a green one, too. I remember when the golden ones came out for the first time. They hadn't "quite" gotten the genetics down yet, and when you cooked it, the color leached out and when you drained the water, it looked a lot like, well, urine. Now THERE's something that will turn a cook's stomach. Now, though, the color seems to fade a little, but to hold in the final product. That's a "good thing." I think that happens with the purple variety too, but honestly, here's one of my prejudices, I can't see myself eating a purple vegetable other than eggplant. I have a purple sweet potato in my fridge from Nevia, BEGGING to be cooked, and I just can't do it....

Anyway, cooks seem to have "gotten it" and cauliflower became "chic" last year, even to the point of one restaurant putting a side order of white/golden/purple cauliflower on the menu at 15.00 a plate. FIFTEEN BUCKS for cauliflower. Can you imagine? I think they either took it off the menu or reduced the price. There is no way I would pay that. Would you?

Cauliflower works beautifully as a soup. You saute the florettes in butter and oil with other aromatic vegetables until they just begin to soften, then add stock and cook it until it's soft enough to puree. When it's cool, either put it through the food mill, for a rustic feel, or blend it for a smooth one. Add milk if you like, but that will obscure the taste. It's also wonderful baked in a cheese sauce, or deep fried, but let's face it: you could cut the rubber fingers off of a glove and deep fry them, or bake them in cheese sauce and it would taste good. No, let's stick with getting the flavor of the vegetable.

This is my current favorite way of serving cauliflower. I almost always use the golden one for this, but you can use the white variety, and it will look like creamy mashed potatoes and you can fool people into trying it. I'm sure the purple variety will work, I'm just not there yet.

You break up the head of cauliflower into florettes, and then cook them in a BIG pot of boiling, salted water, until they just begin to feel tender. It shouldn't take more than ten minutes to do that. Then, fish them out and put them in a food processor or blender, with about half a cup of the cooking water, and puree this to a nice smooth puree. Add some salt, and either butter OR, my new favorite finishing ingredient "olio verde." Olio verde is "fresh" olive oil, which is to say olive oil that has not been allowed to settle down yet. It's got a bite of pepper that is a bit fierce, and it's GOOD. You don't cook with this oil. You finish vegetables with it.

If you want to trick people into tasting cauliflower, you can put a pat of butter into the puree instead of olive oil. The purees really DO look like very creamy mashed potatoes. It's a good way to get people to pay attention to what they're eating, something we ALL need to do.

My second favorite way of using this vegetable is in a pasta dish, that I'm told comes from Sicily, where cauliflower is a key vegetable in the winter. I'm told that you can do this several ways, here's how I do it. First, I boil the florettes of a head of cauliflower like above, but I stop the cooking after five minutes, because I'm going to cook them again. Then, in a pan with some olive oil, I add the cauliflower, some capers (preferably salted ones that I've soaked to get some of the salt out), and then some dry bread crumbs. Many folks add anchovies at this point, but it's another ingredient that is not in my list of favorites . So instead I add pine nuts at this point. And sometimes raisins. I just toss this together and add some olive oil to it at the end. NO CHEESE. Then, boil up a pound of pasta and toss this vegetable sauce through it (you need a pasta like ziti or rigatoni or something short and "muscular" like that. No linguine here, and use dried pasta). I made this pasta concoction one year for a party, thinking that no one would touch it and we'd eat the leftovers the next day. In fact, I had to run to the kitchen and make a second batch of it.

So, it's time to come out of the closet all you cauliflower lovers. Try these recipes. Let me know if you like them. I really hope you do.

What ARE those things? Persimmons

Persimmons are one of those fruits that people don't know a lot about, and I blame agricultural distributors for that. And also cookbook writers. You see them just about now in East Coast markets: dull orange colored, either tear dropped shaped, or round, like apples, with a big "star" in the center from where they grew on the tree. Occasionally, you'll see another variety called a chocolate persimmon, that is very small and has big black seeds in it. When it's ripe, it's got brown spots, like pock marks all over it.

Persimmons do not appear to be very promising as fruit. Usually, you find them rock hard, when they are essentially as inedible as a quince. Bite into one, and you'll wish you didn't. They are so full of tannin, you'll feel like you just drank the dregs from a bottle of good red wine. If they're ripe - and there are varieties that MUST be "drop dead" ripe to be edible - they are so soft that they will literally squish in your hand. Good for eating, terrible for storing and selling: if you have something so soft that it will "moosh" when it's touch, what do you do? Think about it: when you buy bananas, even if you like them black and soft and ripe, do you buy them that way? No, you buy them firmer, and let them ripen at home. And that is how you should buy persimmons if you want to try them, unless you're willing to lose some of them on the way home as they bump into each other and turn to goo.

I used to buy them that way. In fact, one "grocery store moment" I will always remember came about seven years ago. It was after work, and I was buying produce for the weekend. There was a big box of very, VERY soft persimmons: five for a dollar. I grabbed ten, and the manager looked at me and said "take another five, I don't want them." Uh, twist my arm. And I went into this reverie thinking "you know, if I had a restaurant, I would now ask him how much he wanted for ALL of them, t ake them back to the shop and make a special dessert." I did that anyway, but it was only for a few people.

Thoughts of persimmons this morning because of chatting with my friend Gary over a "persimmon pudding" I made last night. I could say LOTS about Gary and embarrass him silly and I may do that one day anyway, so let me justs say that Gary knows his produce. And his flowers. And anything that grows. Show him the plant, and he'll say "oh, that's..... You got it from....." And he'll be right. Gary knows I basically live by "local and seasonal," so when he heard that the dessert was persimmon , his question was "where did you get them at this time of year?" See, persimmons on the EAST coast are a fruit that needs a hard frost to be edible. It seems to be the frost that puts down the tannins and of course, frozen, thawed fruit is always soft. We haven't had that, yet, so "where did you get those" was a logical question.

I got them from the citrus folks, Kim, Sandra and Eric. I got an email one day saying "the persimmons are in, we just sent you a box." And given their generosity, this was NOT a box of six or seven fruit. Uh uh. Probably closer to 25 pounds.

I love using persimmons in salad, and we had the "triple P" salad of pomegranates (also from the gang), persimons and pistachio nuts, and then the pudding.

Guy does a bakesale for his Chorus as a fundraiser. They had their last one before their holiday concert last night, so he wanted to do an "eat free" night. Given my southern Italian love of excess, I said "let's do it big." So we did. And persimmon pudding was one of the things we brought.

"Pudding" is deceptive in this context. This is really a cake. I guess it's there because in England, "pudding" is a dessert, and the British DO know something about persimmons.

The recipe is adapted from Lindsey Shere's incredible "Chez Panisse Desserts," with my usual modification. I left some things out, and changed the cooking time. But it DOES take a while. It's a cake to make when you're going to be home for a while: like during persimmon season when it's cold and nasty outside. This is a real delight. You can eat it plain, like I do, or put some vanilla ice cream with it, or whipped cream. It takes very well to spirits too. Flavor the whipped cream with brandy, or pour some over the ice cream, or just sip it while you're eating it. It's GREAT

You need a pound and a half of persimmons. Make sure you have the variety that does not need to be soft to eat, or if you do, that they're soft. And if you have more than a pound and a half, that's ok, too. Cut the tops off, and then cut the fruit into pieces. Puree them in a food processor (this is a recipe where , unfortunately, I think you do need a processor. I don't know how you would do this without one). Put it aside. (Ms. Shere tells us to peel them. I didn't and it wasn't a problem). Put them aside, and then mix in a bowl 1.25 cups of flour , a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of baking powder, a teaspoon of cinnamon, and put that aside .

Now, mix together 3/4 cups of sugar, 3 large eggs, and EITHER two cups of milk or 1.5 of milk and .5 of cream (light or heavy, your choice). Add the persimmon pulp to t his, then pour the whole thing into the flour mixture, and stir it to combine it. (Ms. Shere suggests letting this sit for a while to thicken, but I didn't see a need. She also toasts walnuts and combines them with butter, which I've left out, because many people won't eat the nuts. Also, she has left out a lot of spices so that you taste the persimmon. I fully agree with this approach, and leave out the nuts as well).

Pour this mixture into a buttered springform pan (9 inches is a good size), and then stand it on a baking sheet. Put it into a preheated, 350 oven and let it bake for 2 hours (in the original, it calls for 2-3 hours. I think that more than 2 would probably burn the thing to death, but use your judgement. If it's "just jiggly" at the center, after two hours, you're done).

The cake is an example of "plain is pretty" It's dark brown, and it's solid, but when you unmold it, and put it on a plate and start thinking about "what does it need?" the answer is NOTHING. Just leave it as it is. No powdered sugar, no candied violets, NOTHING. And you don't have to refrigerate it.

Yes, it's best warm, but room temperature will do just fine, too, and it's so satisfying, you will serve a LOT of people with it, and have leftovers, which you will be glad to have.

And in making this, especially in the fall, you will be connecting with the past. Keep in mind that, before transport was available, in the winter, this was one of the few sweets that were available.

This is really one of my favorite cakes to make, and persimmons are one of my favorite ingredients to play with. I hope you'll search them out and try it

When "OK" isn't good enough

Going back a few months, I had an email chat at work with my friend Steve. He was asking about a pork tenderloin he had cooked the night before. I don't recall the particulars, but I remember that he was asking about the recipe because "it was OK, but OK isn't good enough for me when I do the cooking."

Anyone who cooks with any kind of frequency gets into that frame of mind. Dishes that your friends love, taste "so so" to you, or just plain off. A show of hands here: how many of you have served dinner to your friends, had them all "oooh" and "ahhhh" over it, while you sit there , knowing they're being honest, but thinking "I'm not tasting it...."

What you cooked is fine. What has happened, in my opinion, is that your taste buds have moved on. If you're serving a dish to company, it means , probably, that you've cooked it before, perhaps more than once, and you've gotten it "just right" to your taste. So, BAM. The thrill of the new is gone. And for people who like to cook, part of the "rush" is that sense of "what is new." If I remember correctly, I didn't see anything that was "wrong" with what Steve had cooked. But every single cook has very strong opinions. And if he thought it wasn't good enough, it wasn't good enough for him.

I recalled that bit of history when I was trying to think of what to do with some pork tenderloin I had taken out of our freezer. This is a cut of meat that I'm fairly new to. We certainly didn't have it when I grew up, and even after it became "the rage," I had avoided it. Too popular.
Its popularity is easy to see: it's very lean, it cuts into nice, small slices so it's fine for kids as well as adults who want "just a bit," and because it is not as strongly flavored as other cuts of pork, it takes to just about anything you give it (which is a gift and a curse).

I, too, was thinking of something that was "more than ok," but I wanted it to be quick, and easy.

I don't quite know what "lock and key" operate when I get ideas in the kitchen, especially when they work. But this one did.

Some years ago, the head chef at City Bakery in NY, published a recipe for pretzel encrusted chicken. For about four months, it was EVERYWHERE. The pretzel vendor at our Farmers' Market even had a sign up "these are the pretzels you need for Ilene's chicken." I went along with it. It is an excellent recipe: a simple food processor sauce is used to coat the chicken, and then it's coated with pretzel crumbs and baked. Then, the coating sauce is used as a dipping sauce as well.

Remember that old TV and magazine campaign: "PORK. The other white meat?" Well, there was the connection. The sauce for the chicken is made of balsamic vinegar, mustard and water.

Mustard is a natural with pork. The sharpness cuts right across any fat, and seems to compliment the mild flavor. The sweet/sour ("agrodolce" as we Italians call it) flavor of balsamic is also a common combination with pork. Finally, add the saltiness of pretzels, and CRUNCH, and how could it fail?

In fact, it didn't. I did have to modify the recipe a bit, but it wasn't too difficult. You will probably want to modify it too, as Steve will, and go right ahead. Remember, this is a guide, not a rule book.

To make the sauce, you will need equal amounts of mustard and balsamic vinegar. Let me take the vinegar first. Get a GOOD one, but not a GREAT one. In other words, leave the 99c a bottle stuff at Costco, but don't use that 25 year old stuff that pours like molasses and costs a hundred bucks. I used 2 year old vinegar that cost me six bucks a bottle. I used a cup of it, with a cup of mixed dijon and honey mustard (thinking, correctly, that honey is a good combo for pork). You combine this with half a cup of water. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. FIRST, you need to make the crumbs.

You need good pretzels. Not the thin ones you buy for snacking, but the thick, "tooth breakers." I use a brand that is locally made , "Martin's" They are really good, and while I can deal without the 'FREE BIBLE VERSE IN EVERY BAG' I do like the pretzels. And I use the regular salted ones, although you should feel free to use the "baldies" or rub some of the salt off. Put a half pound of them in the food processor and plug up your ears as they turn to crumbs. Don't go for fine, evenness. You want irregular crumbs: some big, some small. Then dump them out on a flat surface, like a baking sheet.

NOW you make the sauce. Don't even bother cleaning the food processor. Just put the three liquids in, and whirl. Pour that off to the side. You will want to use about half of it for dipping the pork, so pour that onto a second sheet pan.

Now, roll your pork tenderloin in the sauce and then the crumbs. When I do this with chicken, one dip is enough to get a good coating, but I had my doubts with the tenderloin, so I did a dip in sauce, then pretzels, then repeated it. That turned out to be a good idea. I only had one tenderloin, but there was enough stuff to do two of them if you wanted to. BUT KEEP HALF OF THE SAUCE RESERVED.

Put your tenderloins onto a baking sheet- maybe even the one you used for the crumbs, that has been coated with parchment paper if you like, and bake them at 375 for about 30 minutes.

I will admit that I'm unsure if this is proper time. When I did mine, 30 minutes brought the pork just past pinkish red and bloody, to pink/white, and still juicy. But if eating pink pork gives you the skeeves, keep cooking it. DO keep in mind that because tenderloin has an irregular shape, the thin pieces at the end will be cooked more, and crispier then the central slices.

After it's cooked as long as you like, slice it on the bias, and use that extra sauce to pour over the pork.

I can't imagine serving this without cabbage, which is not everyone's cup of tea, so use your favorite vegetable. And if you go t hrough this recipe, you'll see t hat there really isn't any fat in it, other than what's in the very lean pork. So do something rich for sauce. If I have time when I serve these, I'm making spaetzle (yes, I made it ahead of time).

You can play with the mustard you use: there are so many interesting ones around. I don't like all dijon, and I don't like all honey mustard in the sauce: they go from too acidic to too sweet for me. But it's your choice. And of course, play with the amount of salt in the pretzels, and the cooking time.

So , Ilene, your idea goes forward.

And Steve, if you make it, I hope you find it better than ok.

How recipes change: forty clove garlic chicken

There's a "somewhat" legendary recipe from French cooking called "chicken with forty cloves of garlic." The classic way of doing the dish is to push, literally, forty cloves of garlic under the skin of a whole bird. Unpeeled. During the slow roast of the bird, the garlic softens, and flavors the meat. Then, when you carve the chicken, you serve it with french bread, and some of the garlic on each plate. The diners squeeze the garlic, now sweet from baking and flavored with the chicken fat, onto their bread.

It IS a good dish. It is frustrating to prepare, because getting forty cloves of garlic under the skin of a chicken takes a fair amount of time, and a good sense of place: "OH. There's a clove there already." It's really a recipe for cooking at home, because you rarely find people who want to order a whole chicken and share it in a restaurant (except maybe at Zuni Cafe, and there are REAL good reasons for doing it there. YOU MUST).

At one of our favorite, and alas, now gone restaurants, "Inside," chef Charlene used to have forty clove garlic chicken on her menu. But she did it differently. Charlene's was a braise, of chicken parts, with peeled garlic cloves. Like all of her food, it was sublime. But I couldn't figure out how she made it.

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published a recipe for it, and while the recipe is basically good, it has a few features that, to me, are infuriating. For example, the recipe calls for "one four pound chicken, cut into eight pieces." Ok, so if you buy a whole chicken and decide to cut it up yourself, how do you get eight pieces (cutting up your own chicken, by the way, is very easy)? Yes, two legs, two thighs, two breasts and.... Uh..... Unless you know to take each breast half and cut it in half , you don't get eight pieces. A butcher will do it for you, but 'fess up: how many of you buy your chicken from a butcher, and ask him or her to cut it up? The other problem with a recipe like this, is something cooking columns like the one in the NY Times warn you about all the time: DIFFERENT CHICKEN PARTS COOK DIFFERENTLY. If you cook the breasts until they're done, the legs will be underdone, and so forth. So, instead of using a chicken, cut into eight pieces, given that you can buy chicken cut just about any way you like, why don't you use parts that are uniform? Also, the recipe included a very subtle contradiction. In the first step, it tells you to brown the chicken, "cooking it in batches if necessary." It will be necessary. There is no skillet big enough to hold eight pieces of a four pound chicken. Fair enough. But then, after all of the meat is browned, the recipe says "return all of the chicken to the pot." Well, if it didn't fit in the FIRST time, what makes you think it will the SECOND time ? In fact, you have to layer the chicken, and it's not a problem in the recipe. Shouldn't they tell you that? HMMMMMMM? Finally, the recipe simply calls for "forty cloves of peeled garlic." Now, if you don't know how to peel a clove of garlic, peeling forty of them is going to drive you to the point of insanity. Couldn't they have told you how to do it?

I said finally, but I lied. The recipe results in a lot of juice being thrown off. The juice needs to be reduced. No mention of this in the recipe.

Here's how I made it. I used nine chicken drumsticks, because that's what I had. I patted them dry, and salted and peppered heavily, like the recipe said. Then I put them aside to dry while I peeled the garlic.

If you hold a garlic clove in your hand, you will see a pointed end. That's where you want to work. Use a small knife, and make a horizontal cut to take it off. Once you do that, the clove will peel easily. And it has to if you're going to do forty, which is anywhere from six to eight bulbs (Incidentally, Jacques Pepin showed us how to do this on one of his shows. More people should watch him cook. I learn something every time).

When the garlic was ready, I did what the recipe said and added two tablepoons of olive oil, and one of butter, to the largest skillet I had. I had to brown the chicken in two batches, and that was fine. It took me about twelve minutes at high heat When this was done, again I did what the recipe said and put the chicken back in the pan. I moved things around in order to get the garlic cloves in, again as directed, and turned down the heat to medium. I let this cook for about twelve minutes, shaking the pan, and moving the chicken pieces around (something NOT in the recipe, but important if you want uniform browning). Then, I added half a cup of stock and half a cup of white wine (I'm not bragging: I had a little Kistler left over from Thanksgiving, and that's what I used. Use anything dry, or use just stock, or frankly, all wine). Then a cover went on the pan, and it cooked away at low heat for fifteen minutes.

This is where the Times recipe ends, but this is what I did. I took the chicken, and most of the garlic cloves, out of the pan. Some I left behind in the ample juice, and crushed them and stirred until they dissolved. Then I turned up the heat, and reduced the liquid to less than half and poured it all over the reserved chicken and garlic.

All in all, it took about 45 minutes. What the recipe also doesn't tell you is that this dish, like all braises, can be made ahead of time and reheated. And that's just what we're going to do.

If I were making this for Kevin, the potato king of the Village, mashed potatoes would be a must. For us, it will probably be rice. The vegetables from the Farmers' Market this week are chard, yellow cauliflower, and romesco, and I haven't quite decided. Probably romesco. The caulflower would put too much on the yellow end of the rainbow on the plate, and the other proteins this week are tuna steak and pork tenderloin. I think we'll have the chard with the fish, and the cauliflower with the pork.

It's a good dish, not that hard, and again, unless you're really, REALLY hungry, plenty to share. And the garlic cooks to a sweet, SWEET lovely soft "something." Don't worry about scaring off werewolves.

KEEP on trusting yourself in the kitchen

One of the themes that I hope emerges from these blogs is that I don't feel tied to recipes, and I don't want you too , either. If you let all of your sense be engaged - and remember, thinking is one of the senses in my book - then you will become a superb cook. That doesn't mean you will be a "chef," which is a title that is much overused, and in any event, is frequently disavowed by people who cook professionally. "Don't call me a chef. I'm a cook." Well, if you think about it for a minute, if you have a favorite restaurant, with a cook who makes food you love, and you're a cook too, you have something in common.

I am thinking of this today because after a whole lot of years I DO trust myself in the kitchen...MOST of the time. If I'm making something I'm familiar with, like soup, I can pretty much toss out a recipe, except for the outlines, and do something I like.

Last week I watched a television program on which they made Mexican tortilla soup, or what they CALLED Mexican tortilla soup. There was no tomato in it, and I remember that soup as being decidedly tomato based . Nonetheless, the recipe looked good. The cook poached chicken thighs in chicken stock and water, and let them cool. Then she reheated the stock with some jalapeno peppers to give it heat, put shredded chicken meat back in, and served it with some tortilla strips she had toasted herself.

A good soup. But I wanted something different. You could say (and you'd be right), that I didn't want to bother with having to find the tortilla strips when I served the soup, let alone storing them away from permanent damage from "i cinque gatti" . And my friend Nora had mentioned posole during the week. "Hmmm. Posole. Got some of that." Now, I have dried posole, and I have it in the cans. Making posole from dried is a rewarding, and incredibly time consuming process. So, this time, the cans would do. And I can't see chicken soup without thinking about vegetables. So I thought carrots. Had those on hand.

So I poached the chicken thighs, after I had pulled off the skin, in stock (when I saw the program she used 2/3 stock and 1/3 water. Can't understand why). Instead of cooking them forever, I brought the stock to a boil, and then let everything sit and cool down (I used eight thighs). When they were cool, I added two jalapenos, one whole, one cut in half and brought the stock back to the boil, as I chopped the carrots (one bunch) into coins. While they were cooking and I was shredding the chicken, I thought "WAIT. CABBAGE. I have some cabbage in the fridge." Indeed, I did have half a head of red cabbage. I shredded half of that half into thin slices and tossed it in with the carrots. Some bulk and some flavor, but I DO warn you: red cabbage bleeds, so we have a dark soup now. Then I put the chicken back in, opened two cans of posole and rinsed the corn , and put that in the soup as well. I tasted and since there was enough zip from the jalapenos, pulled them out.

I got well over 3 quarts of soup from this. And the reaction from the farmers I fed was very, very positive. And I tasted it too.

DAMN , it's good.

So, how should you play with this, instead of following me? Here are some suggestions: use rice, instead of posole, or sweet corn (frozen corn is just fine), or use some other left over cooked grains you have. Don't have chicken stock in the house ?(BAD BOY or GIRL) Water will do if it must. No cabbage? Leave it out. Or use green cabbage. No carrots? Use celery. Don't like vegetables? Don't use any. Jalapenos too hot for you ? How about those Anaheim chilis that you can get in a can? Like it hotter? Use serranos or habaneros, but be careful.

See? There's lots you can do with this. For example, I'm thinking now that I could substitute the chicken with some pork of some kind, and use mushrooms and keep the posole, and maybe put in some spinach .

So come on folks! As the much missed Richard Sax one wrote 'GET IN THERE AND COOK" And let me know how it turns out. I really wanna steal the recipes

Everyone needs to know how to make dessert

In my experience, people who cook frequently refer to themselves as "food people" or "dessert people." I know many really, truly good cooks, who are just too intimidated by the "art of pastry" to try dessert. And then there are people who never "cook," but go into the kitchen and whip up a fantastic chococlate souffle, or a knock you flat fruit crisp, a pie that is so flaky it makes you weep, and so forth.

I'm hoping that the second group of people "get" some of the recipes and ideas in this series of entries. You can read the rest of this if you like (I wish you will), but this one is mostly directed to the first group.

SHAME ON YOU!!!! How many of you have a signature dish that you spend hours making, gets oohs and ahs and that people PLEAD with you to make? My friend Dave, for example, who DOES bake, makes killer brisket (which I wouldn't attempt to make for all the truffles in Italy). We have a friend who lives in update NY, who will go into a kitchen, grab the flour, the eggs, and fifteen minutes later have homemade pasta on a plate that feels like a cloud. If you can do this, you CAN make dessert. And if baking still intimidates you, well, here's a good one.

If you mention "dessert" to people, almost always they will think of "something with CHOCOLATE." And there's everything right with this. Chocolate is a wonderful basis for many wonderful dessert. But.... more times than not, if you put a menu in front of those very same people, and there's a chocolate dessert, and a fruit dessert, they will order the fruit dessert.

EVERYBODY likes fruit. Not everybody likes every type of fruit, but everyone has a whole group of fruits that they like, some that they love, and some that they will reach for, forgetting their manners to "get their share." My friend Kevin is very upfront about this. He said to me once "I'll eat anything sweet, but if there's a grapefruit dessert on the menu, I'm having that." For me, it's quinces. For Guy, it's berries. And I'll bet there's one for you too.

So, you would be dessert maker, here's a general formula for one of the most simple, yet one of the most wonderful desserts in the world: baked, stuffed fruit.

Now, I'm not talking about baked apples, although I don't understand why these seem to have fallen out of favor. A good baked apple, smelling of cinammon, vanilla, with crunchy bits against a soft apple , is a true thing of beauty. And the guidelines below CAN be used for apples. But I'm talking about other fruits that you haven't baked: pears, peaches, plums, apricots, anything that has a cavity that can be filled. Unquestionably, at this time of year, if you're eating seasonally in the northeast, that's apples and pears for the most part. And nothing is wrong with using these. There are a skazillion variations you can work with from the guidelines.

You will need fruit, that is just a little firmer than you would want it to be to eat out of hand. You will also need a sweet or flavored liquid of some kind (juice, cider, sweet wine, vermouth, something like that). You will also need butter, sugar, and some kind of sweet crumbs. Cookie crumbs, or sweet bread crumbs, or cake crumbs, anything like that. Amaretto cookies are good for this, in just about all fruits, as are ginger snaps with autumn and winter fruits. Shortbread cookies - the plain ones - go with just about anything. I have some stale brioche crumbs that I'm thinking will make a good filling for some bosc pears. The "bottom line" is to link some kind of crunchy thing with fruit. Trust your tastebuds. For example, anything almond will go with any summer fruit (crack a pit sometime and look at that little almondy thing: what the French call the noyau. HINT). They also go with apples and pears, and you can treat them as the universal, but be a bit creative. Gingersnaps? APPLES (or pears). Vanilla wafers? That says "pear" to me, but maybe it says apple to you. What you want is two parts of crumbs, to one part of sugar. So if you have half a cup of cookie crumbs, mix it with a quarter cup of sugar. And then add the same quantity of soft, unsweetened butter, and combine it till you get a nice mass of sweet, fragrant, "stuff."

Now get your fruit ready. For just about anything but apples, cut the fruit in half and cut out the core part where the seeds are. You may want to enlarge it a bit for pears, but not too large. The dessert is still about the fruit. For apples, you'll have to carve them from the top. It will be easier if you cut a small horizontal slice at the top and then cut in with a small knife, but I will tell you, apples are more difficult than other fruit (and maybe I just answered my own question about the decline in popularity of baked apples). Put your fruit in a buttered glass or ceramic baking dish, cut side up. If you have extra filling around - and I hope you do - sprinkle it over the fruit as well.

Now, you need a flavored liquid. Again, you have to work with your tastebuds here. Think about drinks and what they taste like. For example, when I drink gewurtztraminer or riesling wines, I always taste apples. And sauternes taste like apricots to me. I always think of peaches with sweet marsala, and I always think of pears with a good, oaky chardonnay. Whatever works for you (and it doesn't have to be alcoholic), pour about a half inch of it in the pan with the fruit. Then cover it with foil, and put it in a 375 oven for about twenty minutes. Take off the foil and bake it for another ten minutes. Test it with a knife to see if it's tender enough for you. If it is, bring everything out of the oven. If not, let it cook another ten minutes.

This dish is impossible to eat right out of the oven. Nothing will burn your mouth worse than hot fruit (Trust me on this). So let it sit for about fifteen minutes, then serve it up, pouring some of the juices over it. If you like, you can put some whole cookies corresponding to what you used for the stuffing alongside of it, and/or some dairy based "thing." I don't find them necessary at all with this dessert, but if I were doing pears at this time of year, I might put some creme fraiche next to them, or some plain mascarpone cheese, with some of the juice over the cheese as well.

If you do this with pears, at this time of year, you'll realize how many variations you've just opened up to yourself. And all you savory cooks have just become pastry chefs, in one short lesson. You may never go back!

Trust yourself in the kitchen

I think that a big reason that people don't cook is because they've tried, and a recipe didn't work, or something went wrong, and the recipe didn't turn out the way it looked, or the way they thought it would.

That's unfortunate. It's hard to explain this, but a recipe, as written down, is really only how ONE person made the dish at one point in time. It's not going to be the same, ever. But if you're confident, and it doesn't take much, really it doesn't.

I'm going to offer a case study here, with a recipe I made today, on Thanksgiving. The recipe is from Anne Rosenzweig, one of my chef heroes. Anne's recipes are superb. One of them is a standard Thanksgiving dish for me, and it always turns out right. The one I made today was new, and if I had made it to s pecifications, it wouldn't have worked. But that's okay. I will explain.

The ingredients are very simple: butternut squash, carrots, leeks, shallots, zucchini and apples.

The first thing she calls upon you to do is to peel and clean the squash. Standard. Then, cut the squash into 3/4 inch cubes.

I don't have a tape measure or ruler in the kitchen, and I have a very difficult time estimating lengths. So I diced. Probably too small. Then, she calls for tossing that squash in two teaspoons of vegetable oil and then roasting it for twenty five minutes "until just tender."

Well, I misread the oil and used two tablespoons. And I cut the squash too small. So after twenty minutes, it was plenty tender. So I stopped. Twenty five, and it would have been mush.

Then, I needed a cup of diced carrots, a cup of diced leeks, a cup of diced zucchini, a cup of diced apples( golden delicious) and half a cup of shallots, chopped. Now, the zucchini was gone from the market when I shopped. I thought about "what could substitute?" And given what I had in my fridge, there was nothing. So I left it out. Think about what the ingredient brings to the finished product. For example, had I no butternut squash, I wouldn't have made the recipe. Had I no shallots, I might have used a red onion. I don't like golden delicious apples, so I used mutsus. To my taste, leeks are hard to substitute, so had I no leeks, I wouldn't have done it either. For carrots? Hmmmm. Maybe I would have put in m ore squash if I didn't have them (but every kitchen should have carrots and onions in the house at all times).

So while the squash was baking, I cut up the rest of the vegetables. "Dice" is a very specific time that, frankly, I just do not have time for. I cut the carrots into coins, I cut the leek into p roper dice. My shallots were very small, so instead of dicing, I cut them in half. I cut the apples in big chunks.

When the squash are finished baking, Chef Anne says to cook them with the carrots in a nonstick pan for three minutes, together with another teaspoon of oil. Well, I had already mixed the leeks with the carrots, so I tossed them both in, with a tablespoon of oil, and I added the leek cooking time which was another three minutes.

After four minutes, it really did look like they were g etting soft, so I stopped, and added two teaspoons of salt, as called for, with the other vegetables, cooking them for two minutes as directed. Finally, I was supposed to cook these in a cup of chicken stock, for fifteen minutes. After ten, the stock was gone and they sure looked done. So I stopped.


Is it Anne's recipe ? OF COURSE. Would it have worked using her instructions to the letter? Yes. But did it work with my variations? Yes it did. It's tasty. I may add some pecans before ti comes to the table, but who knows

The key here, readers, is to trust yourself. If you don't have an ingredient, think carefully about what will and will not substitute. For example, if you're cooking a recipe calling for shrimp, scallops will almost always work. Onions and shallots can be exchanged. Some things can be left out. But don't get too crazy. If you don't like chocolate and a dessert calls for it, make something else. Don't be one of those people who say to me, "I made your recipe but it didn't work. Was it the substitutions? I didn't want to use chicken, so I used beancurd, and I didn't have whole milk so I used skim, and I didn't have onions so I used peppers, and instead of cashews I used sesame seeds " (that's a true story).

Cooking is, very much, an art. It's not rocket science. Make your own recipe today. Start with something and then play with it. And let me know how it works. I am truly interested in how your changes created a dish that people will associate with YOU

When I have a bad day

I was planning to post a blog tonight on baked, stuffed fruit. In my opinion, even if you don't make desserts generally, you should know how to make these. They're easy, and they're good. But it will have to wait.

Today was not my finest moment. It would take way too long to go into details. In brief, I was helping a friend with some issues that I have experience with. I did get frustrated along the way, but apart from that, I let myself fall into a fantasy that I thought was mine alone. It was not. And I got taken down, real fast, real hard. This is a repeating pattern. I work on it, but it's with me, like so many other things. And anyone who gets taken down from his or her fantasy is going to hurt. And I did. And I spent a good ten minutes in the kitchen, after a phone call with my friend, crying my eyes out. But it's Thanksgiving eve, and while I still hurt, I had to move on. People are coming to Thanksgiving Dinner (including my friend), and I needed to get things under control and get things moving.

And I did and they did. Dishes worked and they worked faster than I thought they would. I improvised on one dish that failed, and turned out a dish that is more than not bad. It's good (and I'll post it in days to come). But what turned me around, more than anything else, was doing what I like doing more than anything else: looking at what I have, what I don't have, and making something of it. Here it comes.

In shopping during the week, I did not buy enough salad lettuce. I knew it, and there was no way that I was going to deal with the hordes today, buying lettuce. So, since I want a salad at dinner tomorrow, it was going to have to be a so -called "compound" salad. Looking at what I had around, I had - you guessed it - my favorite golden beets. A box of citrus had arrived from Kim, Eric and Sandra, including some gorgeous persimmons, and a lovely treasure, some "mandarinquats," a small, pear shaped hybrid of a mandarin and a kumquat, which pack explosive flavor. Also pomegranates, one of those things that make these awful dark, dank fall/winter days worthwhile. And I had some red grapefruit too. And from this, a salad was made. And it was GOOD. And we'll have it tomorrow at dinner.

Read "EAT YOUR BEETS" on how to roast and peel golden beets. I cut them in half and squeezed some mandarinquat juice over them, but you could, of course, use any citrus you like. I seeded a pomegranate, and peeled and sliced a grapefruit, like in Christa salad, also below. Finally, the persimmons. Now, you have to be careful with these gems, that are only around for a short time. Certain varieties, when unripe, will pucker your mouth and coat it with nasty tannins in a way nothing else could. When soft and ripe, though, a persimmon is like nothing you've ever tasted. I had some ripe ones, which I cut into small wedges. Then, I took my heads of baby lettuce (from Nivea, of course), and I was in business. A dressing of champagne vinegar, salt, and olive oil, plus the juice that spilled out of the grapefruit when I was cutting it. I tossed the lettuce leaves in that dressing and then added everything else, m ixed together , on top of it. I had a beautiful salad of red and golds, with a little green of the salad greens, which tasted fantastic.

We will be eating that salad tomorrow, near the end of our Thanksgiving Dinner, just as the sun is setting. I'm going to make sure it's in a clear glass bowl. And even if no one else gets it, I will (although I have a feeling that Matthew the squash king will).

I will be ok. The baked fruit will be up soon. Happy Thanksgiving to all.

My Vegan Friend

Guy and I were both vegetarians for about 10 years (me) and 20 years (Guy). Why we "switched over" is a very complex, long story - longer even than these blogs - but we try to eat a vegetarian meal every week. It's not hard at all.

When we were younger, in the 80s, vegetarianism was not the "in" thing that it is now, and it was much more difficult. Nightmarishly difficult was going "one step further" and going vegan. Not using any animal products whatsoever was too hard, even for someone like me, who would live in the kitchen if he could. I had the books, including "Ten Talents," a book about which I have VERY mixed feelings, but I just couldn't do it. ("Ten Talents," for those who don't know it, is the OFFICIAL cookbook of Seventh Day Adventism. You don't get the recipes - which are pretty solid, for the most part - without the philosophy, which is repulsive to me).

As an observer, it seems to me that as vegetarianism has become more accepted, it has become easier to be and to stay one. Veganism, however, still seems to be a very, very difficult regime. Ironically, trying to eat locally and seasonally makes it even harder, at least from my point of view.

People who do in fact choose to live as vegans have a difficult road in front of them. Some become very, very defensive. For example, one of my work colleagues, who is a vegan, insisted that I take her to Carnegie Deli for lunch. Nothing I could do or say changed her mind. So we went. Her lunch was kasha knishes, french fries, a green salad and a cream soda. It didn't seem to be healthier than my tongue and swiss sandwich.

Not all vegans are that way, however, which brings us to my vegan friend, Mark. This is a friendship that developed slowly, and literally out of nowhere. About a year and a quarter ago, Mark sent me a letter, thanking me for a gift I had made to the chorus . (Yes, another chorus buddy. ). Guy gave him the "thumbs up," and I said "let's invite him to dinner." I remember Guy saying "well, you can but he'll turn you down. He's a vegan, and he means it."

And yes, that was a problem. Trying to adapt a meal for a vegan friend, when making a meal for seven non vegans, was just not something I was up for. But over the last year plus, I have gotten to know Mark much better. We only invite people whom we truly love to our monthly dinners, and it's Mark's turn. Soon. And so, for weeks, or more correctly, months, I have been thinking about what I would do. It wasn't easy. But I have a meal in mind, and I want to provide two of the recipes.

The first course would be a trio of winer salads. Beets, carrots, and leeks. I will forego my beloved golden beets for red ones, since the carrots bring orange to the plate. These are all winer vegetables. I would serve them at room temperature. The beets, marinated in orange juice, red wine vinegar and olive oil; the c arrots, tossed with cumin , cider vinegar and a bit of nut oil, and leeks poached in a simple salt water bath, then anointed with olive oil and black pepper. I can think of few vegetarians or meat eaters who would turn this plate down.

To the main course, and here I smile. This is the dish that "turned the key" so to speak on this meal. Last summer, Mark Bittman published an article in the Times on "101 twenty minute meals." Most of them were variations on themes that every good cook knows. One, however, stood out in my mind as something new. I had never thought of the combination, but once we tried it, it's a winner. It's fried tofu in a ketchup sauce. To make it, you cut extra firm tofu into cubes, and pat them dry. Then you toss them in a bag with seasoned flour and then separate the excess flour. Fry the tofu in a pan , preferably non stick, using about three or four tablespoons of vegetable oil to a pound of tofu. Turn the cubes gently until they are nice and brown. Now, here is the part that will make you think "is he sure?" Yes, I am. Remove the tofu and drain it on paper towels. Then, dump a full bottle of a very good quality ketchup right into the pan. Add the tofu, and stir gently until the ketchup is bubbling, and you're done.

Every single person I've made this for has looked at me with a raised eyebrow until they tried it. I imagine people over time reacting that way to many things. I would serve this with white rice. I know, brown rice sounds better to people, but it's one of those foods that I have tried, very hard to like. I don't dislike it, but ... NO

Serving a side vegetable with this is easy. Yes, you can go the Asian route and serve bok choi, or Chinese broccoli, but I would suggest sweet and sour cabbage using a savoy cabbage, or green cabbage, perhaps with a few chestnuts tossed in.

There's no crime to having more than one salad course in a meal, and perhaps one with winter lettuces and chicories, like radicchio would be good, with a simple oil and vinegar dressing.

Dessert would follow a symmetry. Remember the first course, with red, orange and green on the plate? Well, how about a selection of three sorbets: lemon lime, orange, and pomegranate?

Ain't that brilliant? Mark, who is a designer, may very well appreciate that. Pomegranate sorbet is well worth knowing how to make. Take three cups of pomegranate juice (you can use the standard kind, instead of the expensive stuff you find in the store these days), and combine it with a cup of simple syrup, made with a cup of water in which 3/4 of a cup of sugar has been dissolved. Mix this with the pomegranate juice, and taste it. If it's too sweet, add a little lime juice. And then process it in your ice cream maker.

While I would miss the cheese plate, I think that anyone would be happy with that meal. Mark, I hope it sounds good to you, because I plan to call you about it real soon.

Playing with food

At our monthly dinner party for November, I made a French menu, an Italian menu, and two American desserts (I am convinced that the United States' contribution to cuisine is, and will remain, in the dessert field. There are so many GOOD desserts that come out of American kitchens and restaurants that are original, thoughtful and tasty that it defies tradition. Any skeptics should refer to Richard Sax' book on the topic, or the books by David Lebovitz).

But I digress. One dish I made, which is a French classic, was "sole veronique." When I was first learning how to cook, I learned that if "veronique" was in the name of the dish, it meant there were green grapes. Just like "Florentine" meant spinach. There were others too, which I've forgotten, but those two remain.

Sole veronique, as far as I can tell, has fallen on hard times. I don't see it on menus, you don't hear about people make it, and truth to be told, I had never made it either. It may have been the most popular item on our menu (excepting perhaps the peanut butter ice cream), even though I received all kinds of grief for not peeling the grapes, which IS called for in the classic recipe (Some of my detractors did point out the local, NY grapes are tiny, and probably not what the originator had in mind. Ok, I'll accept that, but I'm never trying to peel a grape again).

One thing I noticed when I was making the recipe was that because sole fillets are so thin, and so delicate, it was very hard to make the dish "to specs" without making a mess of it. For example, you're supposed to poach the sole, in a pan on the stove, and then move it to a baking dish.

Try to do that and keep the fillet intact. Especially when you're doing twelve of them at once. Or even two.

Anyway, I gave up and didn't finish the poaching. It turned out to not be necessary, and if you didn't know the grapes were SUPPOSED to be peeled, I don't think you'd know.

In chatting with Kevin after the dinner, he wondered if the dish could be made with cod. And you know, I think it could. So I'm presenting a recipe here that I warn you all: I have not made it yet. But it sounds like it should work. You can find sole vernonique recipes on the web, but I'll present how I made it, and then the cod variation. Try it. It's a lot easier than you may think and you can smile and say "I'm cooking CLASSIC French food."

You'll need two pounds of sole fillets, a cup of white wine, or chicken stock, or fish fumet, or a combination of these . Now, I don't know about you, but I do not keep fish fumet on hand. But what I DID do is sit the sole in a cup of dry chardonnay for half an hour (ALWAYS use a wine you would drink when you're cooking. ALWAYS. It doesn't have to be the same one you're going to drink but if you wouldn't sip it, don't cook with it). Then I did move the fillets to a baking dish, reserving the wine.

I combined two tablespoons of unsalted butter with two of flour, to make a small amount of a roux, and then slowly added the wine, cooking until it was thick. A pinch of salt next. Then, I added half a cup of heavy cream and cooked it, too, until it was thickened. Finally, I added a heaping cup of stemmed, seedless (but not peeled), green grapes. A quick taste to correct the seasonings, and the sauce was done.

This sauce is hot, and when I poured it over the thin slices of fish, it cooked them just enough. I then ran the whole dish under the broiler for five minutes and served it forth.

If you didn't get there fast, you didn't get any of the sole.

Now for the cod, I would do this precisely the same way, but since cod is thicker, I think I would in fact poach it just for about five minutes in the liquid. Cod has a stronger taste than sole to me, so I might use half chicken stock and half white wine. And also, now that grapes are out of season, maybe I would saute an apple in some butter, and use that instead.

Let's call this one "Codfish ala Sterns" He would prefer for me to call it "Codpiece ala Sterns," but we'll all deal with it.

Try it. Let me know how it turns out.

Comfort foods: eggplant parmagiana

As we head into Thanksgiving, it seemed appropriate to reflect on comfort foods, because ultimately, what we consider comfort foods become part of our tradition, and Thanksgiving is, in so many ways, both good and bad, a holiday of tradition.

You all know what I mean about that. 'Nuff said, huh?

Eggplant parmagiana is not a dish I associate with Thanksgiving, but it IS probably my most treasured comfort food. I love making it. I love eating it, and I love sharing it with people. But of the three, I think I love eating it the best. I'm serious about that. If I made a pan of eggplant parmagiana, and "forgot" to invite anyone over, I could eat my way through it, without a problem in the world. During the winter, when local eggplant is not available, I will violate my own rules vigorously in order to make it. And it's one of those dishes where I must say, up front, NEVER MAKE IT FOR ME, because on this one, mine is best. At least to me. I have never had an eggplant parmagiana anywhere that hasn't made me want to go home and do it myself because I like mine better. I do have an award for it, but awards are in the eye of the beholder. I want to share my recipes (because I have two of them) with you, and let you go to it. The first time through, this is a time consuming recipe. But after that, you'll find it is really a very fast dish to do.

The first recipe is the traditional way I do it. This is heavy, stick to your ribs food. It's close to the classic one you see everywhere. One commentator, who left off the breadcrumbs in his said "folks who bread their eggplant don't like the taste of eggplant. "

Those of us who like our eggplant breaded and who DO like the taste of eggplant wish that people like this would please go and cook something else.

What you will need is two, really nice sized eggplants, about two quarts of tomato sauce, some good quality mozzarella (but not necessarily the best), and some parmagiana cheese. Also, flour, breadcrumbs, salt, and a whole LOT of vegetable oil. That oil may be the key to making this dish well.

Peel your eggplants, and then cut horizontal slices about 1/4-1/3 inch thick. Contrary to what you may read, you do NOT have to salt eggplant and let them sit to get out the bitter juices. Like the strings in string beans, that has been bred out of modern eggplants. (Incidentally ,if you can find heirloom eggplants, like the wonderful Sicilian striped ones, or white ones, by all means, use them. These are smaller than the purple globes, though, so you should get more of them ). Leaving peel on the eggplants "for fiber," is not an option. Frying eggplant peel makes it very bitter. Sort of like me after a dish of bad eggplant parmagiana.

After you have the eggplants peeled and sliced, you need to get a "fry station" ready. What that means is seasoned flour , in one container (or, a big plastic bag), three or four eggs, beaten, and cut with about half a cup of water, or milk, in a second container, and a third one filled with seasoned breadcrumbs. (This is one where I use the storebought. Just seems to work better for me). What you do is coat the slices in the seasoned flour. You can do the "shake and bake" technique for this, which is really easy and recommended, or you can dip them in bowl or pan of flour and shake off the excess. Try to do them all at once, because otherwise, you're going to wind up with very messy, sticky fingers.

When they're done, start dipping the slices first in the eggwash, letting excess drip off, and then into the crumbs. When the slices are coated with crumbs, put them on a tray until you're done. You will get all kinds of "hints" as to how to do this, like using one hand for the egg, and the other for breadcrumbs, so as to keep the crumbs from building up on your fingers. That never works for me, and I wind up cleaning my fingers several times, but try it if you like.

When you're done, fill a big pan or pot with about two, even three, inches of vegetable oil. Don't use olive oil here, it burns too easily. You need all this oil because eggplant is very spongy. Interestingly enough, if you use too little oil, the eggplant will suck it all up and you'll get a heavy, greasy dish. If you use lots of oil, so it can "swim," you'll be much better off. Bring the oil to 350 (if you don't have a thermometer, make a little "hush puppy" of egg and breadcrumb, and see if it fries quick and bubbly. If it does, you're there). Fry the slices, without crowding them, until they are nice and brown, and let them drain on paper towel. Eat a few of them when they're cool enough to touch. You're the cook, it's your right. When they're all done and you've finished your snack, get a 9x13 pan, and put a nice pool of sauce in it. Layer some eggplant over this and then slice mozzarella, at liberty (I HATE the recipes that call for shredding). Repeat this, until you're out of everything, and save some sauce to coat everything at the end.

You'll need a pair of good strong arms to lift this onto a baking sheet. NOTICE that I have not put parmagiana on yet. It's coming. Bake the casserole for 45 minutes or so, until everything is bubbling, the cheese is a little brown (you'll see it through the sauce), and it smells like heaven, or Nana's kitchen. Turn off the oven and then, AND ONLY THEN, shave a snowstorm of parmagiana over it. The heat of the baked dish will melt the parmagiana beautifully.

You need to let this sit for a few hours before you eat it. I know, it's hard, but it will be better, and you've made enough for two normal meals or one big gorge.

The second way I make this is lighter. I leave out the breadcrumbs, and I cut the eggplant into long slices instead of round ones (Lidia taught me this). There is an advantage here, in that the resulting eggplant is lighter, so you can eat more of it. The disadvantage, is that if you use breadcrumbs, you CAN put the slices in the fridge and come back to them later. In the second variation, you MUST fry the slices as soon as they come out of the egg. You'll get almost a "tempura" effect on the eggplant slices, and your resulting casserole will be wetter, because there isn't any crumb to absorb excess sauce. It's still good though.

I tend to make the first one when it's "dinner," i.e., the main course. I make the second one if I'm serving it with something, even if it's just pasta. This is not a dish for vegans, but it's a wonderful way of making a vegetarian meal, that's nice and hearty, filling, and ultimately, I think, the kind of dish that gives you a hug.

This post would be incomplete if I didn't comment on the "controversy" about the name of this dish. As you'll see the parmagiana takes a very minor place here, and you may wonder why it's called "eggplant parmagiana" instead of, for example "eggplant mozzarella" (you'll use about a pound and a half of that cheese, by the way).

If you were to leave out the parmagiana, it would taste incomplete. It tastes "wrong" with pecorino romano. But on the other hand, if you left out the mozzarella, it would be incomplete as well. So, where's the name from? Some linguist, without enough to do, has theorized that "palma" is an old word for the round shingles on roofs in southern Italy, and the dish was originally "eggplant palma," because it looked like the shingles.

Know what? WHO CARES???? Dig in. I think this is one of the most wonderful dishes in the world to eat. Like I say, I love cooking it, I love eating it, and I really, really want everyone to make it. Maybe we can even have a contest: six or seven or ten eggplant parmagianas lined up for me to taste test? Oh, yes. Heaven on a plate.

Buon appetito

Party food

Guy and I know a LOT of musicians. Guy is in fact a better than average amateur musician himself. I've observed that, at this time of the year, no one is busier than musicians, with cooks up there vying for first place. I have a problem standing for long periods of time, and by the time we get through New Year's my ankles are going to be very, VERY angry at me. Musicians of course have their own list of ailments that occur from overwork during this very busy season.

Yet, we ALL do it, every year. Is it the endorphin rush, the need for approval, a love of pain, or all of the above? Who knows? And when we do it, all of us try to do as good a job as we possibly can. Whether that is singing something new, or playing something new, or cooking something new, all of us are looking for that sense of internal satisfaction that goes beyond seeing people smile when we offer them the gifts we have.

Still, there is a need, and there always WILL be one, to offer the familiar. If there is a minority of people who want to go to a Christmas music concert and hear only 20th century atonal songs, it's a very small one. At this time of year when, let's face it, we are ALL looking for reassurance, especially in a very scary world, something comfortable, and easy, like a pair of worn out slippers is very very appealing.

For folks who cooks, that means on the one hand, trying something new out in the kitchen, but also, sticking to what's familiar, and what you know people will like. If I'm cooking a meal, and I know I'm going to try out something that may not be a success, I want it to come later in the meal, rather than at the start. If you freak someone out with, say, sardine sushi and raw beet buns while they're drinking champagne, you can bake the best turkey the world has ever seen, and it will not make one bit of difference. They won't taste it. The idea of those over the top starters will be with them, for the whole party.

So this is where I pull out the "tried and true." I want to share two of them with you. Perhaps they will be the "sardine sushi" of your group, but if they aren't, bring them back out. You'll be glad you did.

The first, is prosciutto wrapped figs. Two ingredients that really, simply cannot fail you, if you've got good stuff. I really like prosciutto san danielle, but di parma is also really good. Use something you can afford, and get a GOOD salumeria to cut it for you. You should be able to read a newspaper through properly sliced prosciutto. And with respect to figs: they had a long season this year,but it's over for the fresh ones. If you happen to have some fresh figs when you're doing this, by all means, DO IT. But if you don't, use the dried ones. Get MOIST dried ones, and if they're not that moist, soak them in some hot water for about thirty minutes.

Whether you use fresh or dried, cut that little nasty tip at the top off, and then cut them in half. Long or horizontal, either will do. Then, wrap two halves in one slice of prosciutto. You don't have to be an artist here, just surround them as best as you can. A half pound of prosciutto should give you enough to do about 20-24 figs. When you're done, heat up a grill pan if you have one, or a frying pan if you don't. Use my savior: olive oil. It doesn't take long for the prosciutto to brown, and just rotate the little guys until they're toasty all over. Put them on a plate, and if you're feeling especially flush, drizzle some REAL balsamic vinegar over it.

Talk about comfort.

But even more than figs, I find that people who like mushrooms (and check with your guests, not all do, and then you have another sardine sushi situation), will eat their way through a pan of stuffed mushrooms faster than I'll do a bag of cheez doodles. I love exotic mushrooms,but for these, plain old white ones will do. And look for ones that have opened at the cap a little. It will make preparing the stuffing easier. You'll need all of the stems of the mushrooms you're stuffing, and then chop them fine. I use the food processor because I'm lazy. You can do it with a knife if you like. Then, add an equal amount of breadcrumbs, a very finely chopped clove of garlic (or two. or three), and some herbs. For this, thyme is best. Finish it all off by adding some salt, and just enough olive oil to bind the mix and make it nice and sticky.

Generously fill the mushroom caps, and then put them in a baking dish, wiped with some olive oil. If you want, you can grate some cheese over all of this, but it's far from necessary. Try to space the mushrooms apart from each other a bit, because they will give up moisture, and if they're too close, it won't evaporate, and you'll get a soggy finished product. Bake these at 375 for about twenty minutes, and if you like the toasty feel, then put them under the broiler for a minute or two, and bring them to the table, hot.

So you have two lovely finger foods, that go terrific with any drink you're serving. If you're ambitious and you also put out the artichoke cheese dip from the prior post, you've got such a nice spread, you may not want to sit down to the dinner. And ultimately, there's nothing wrong with a cocktail party and snacks, followed by something other than dinner....

I can't believe I'm eating this!

I am an admitted food snob. Local, sustainable, organic, free ranging, heirloom, artisanal, all buzz words. Every single one of them. But there comes a time when I have to 'fess up: there are things that I eat, that I LOVE, that defy all of those categories. Call 'em what you want: comfort foods they ain't. "Red light foods," like they use in Weight Watchers, they ain't either. It's another one of those things I can't explain.

And you 'fess up too, gentle reader: you have em too. Maybe it's a Nestle's Crunch bar (I'm there on that one), or caramel popcorn (got some to share with me?), or cool whip (I'll pass on that one), we can all make a list of the things we eat that we shouldn't. But it's much more fun to look at someone else eating something and saying "HIM? HER? I can't believe that" But unless you're someone like the sanctimonious party pooper who once wrote an article about how her secret midnight snack was soy milk yogurt (OH PULEEEEEEEZE), you've got one or more of the bad foods in your list. Even Alice Waters admits to a weakness to potato chips.

So, last week, my buddy David asked me for a recipe for an appetizer I make at New Year's. All he said was "you know the one!!!!" I knew the one immediately. And if you step back from this, you would say "DAVID???? YOU???" David plays the cello. David plays the cello at the Met Opera. He's handsome (STOP BLUSHING DAVID. It's true), he's smart (Now he's saying "well, that's right), and if he asked to move into our apartment we'd be there with a truck right now. On one level, the man sweat sophistication. Get to know him better, and the boy from Upstate NY comes out. And at least he 'fessed up to loving this incredibly bad for you dish. I KNOW other people like it, because when I make it, it's gone. People pass over the crab cakes (well, maybe not those), but they pass over the smoked salmon, the stuffed mushrooms, the other goodies, and dig in to this dip. Piling it on bread, piling it on crackers, shoveling it in. And I'm right there with them.

The origin of the dish is very simple. We used to stay at a bed and breakfast in San Francisco called "Petit Auberge" (there was a definite article, but I forget the one, and I'm not embarrassing myself any more in this blog). They had tea and sherry every afternoon at 4, with a hot savory and a cold sweet. Their artichoke cheese savory was reason enough to be back at the hotel early. In fact, we used to ask, at the start of the day "is artichoke dip on the menu?" It was THAT good.

Ok, ok, ok. TEACH US. Well, here it is. And after all my rantings and ravings about "nothing canned," the sins of Hellman's, and everything else, shoot me. I'll make this about five or six times between now and New Year's, and I'll love it each time.

To make one dish of this (and you can quadruple this recipe. That's how much of it I have made, using a can of artichokes so big I could have cut off Grendel's head with the lid), you need three cans of artichokes. Don't bother with the expensive kinds. You're going to drain them and chop them up, so if the cheaper ones are broken pieces, get those. Anyway, like I say, drain them and chop them up, into small pieces. You don't have to be neurotic about this part. Then grate half a pound of Jahrlsberg, or some other cheese into them, and add half a cup of full fat mayonnaise (don't bother with the homemade stuff. It's not as good with the homemade, I swear). Grate a bit of parmesan in (but this time, DO use the good stuff), mix it all up, put it in a baking dish, and bake it for 30 minutes or so, at 350. The mayonnaise will begin to bubble, and the dish will brown slightly. You're done. Serve it warm, with crackers or toast, or cold, the same way. And sometimes, if there's some left over, you can wake up early in the morning, eat it right out of the refrigerator, and then deny there were any leftovers to your partner. He won't believe you, but hey, it's gone now.

Fields of Gold

Remember that song by Sting? His version, or the much missed Eva Cassidy's? Can anyone tell me what it means? What's the story that he's telling? I mean, it's a beautiful song, and maybe I should just leave it alone like that, but there's another song that I love but just don't understand what's going on. Am I slow?(No answers to that question, please).

So, that's a roundabout way to introduce you to barley, because we've got "fields of barley" in the song (which makes me think it's set in Scotland, but that's as far as I go). For some reason, people are afraid of barley. They think they don't like the taste, or that it's hard to cook, or something. When you ask people who say they don't like the taste why they don't like it, most of the time you'll get a 'fess up that they've never tried it. They just "heard" it doesn't taste good. And people who think it's hard to cook, have never cooked it.

I will admit, it does have the "health foods of the sixties" feel about it. GET OVER IT. Seriously, barley is not hard to cook, it's really delicious (especially if you like firmer grains), and let's face it, if you are eating brown rice when you eat take out chinese food 'because it's healthier" (and no one born in China will EVER eat brown rice), you have no excuses. Cook it and eat it now.

Cooking barley is absurdly easy. You take one part barley, to two parts water. You add some salt, bring the pot to the boil, covered, and simmer for about twenty minutes, and you're done. If you want, add some butter or olive oil. If you want, add some herbs when you're cooking it. I think bay leaves are a natural here, and you have them in the kitchen "somewhere."

Ok, so you've just made a great side dish. So what? Well, I'm going to tell you how to use that pot of barley to make yet another wonderful soup, one you like, but you've never made: mushroom barley soup. REMEMBER? Right now, it's in the 30s outside our apartment, and I am f eeling mighty smug about the soup in the fridge. It took half an hour to make and here it goes.

While your barley is cooking away, boil some water and pour it over two ounces of dried mushrooms, preferably porcini. Now, I admit, this is gonna cost you. Dried mushrooms are expensive, and two ounces is a LOT of dried mushrooms. But you're about to make four quarts of soup, so it averages out (especially since the other ingredients are cheap), and you can always ask someone who is travelling to Europe to bring some back for you (I ALWAYS do, and I give them soup in exchange).

Let the mushrooms sit in the water, while you peel and cut into coins, two small bunches of carrots, and slice up half of a large bunch of celery, leaves and all. Peel and chop two onions fine.

Told you the ingredients were cheap. Put some oil in a big pot, and then when it begins to heat up, add the veggies, except the mushrooms, all at once. Add some salt, and if you didn't put bay leaves into the barley, three of them. Wh ile they're sizzling away, separate the mushrooms from the liquid (I use my hands, but you can strain this too), and chop the mushrooms up.

DONT DISCARD THAT MUSHROOM LIQUID . Just look to see if there's any sediment on the bottom. If there is, keep it in mind later on in this recipe.

So, now you've got the veggies and mushrooms sizzling away. Pour in two quarts of chicken stock, and whatever mushroom liquid you have. Stop pouring when the sediment begins to move toward the pot. Lower the heat, and cook away for twenty minutes. You'll finish just about the time your barley does, and at that point, you should drain away any leftover liquid here, and rinse the barley in cold water. You're doing this so it doesn't suck up all of the broth. Now , add the barley to the soup, give it a stir, and if you can resist, let the soup sit for a day.

You've just made about four quarts of soup. It's plenty to share, but you may not want to.

When I make this, the only thing I want with it is a BIG THICK slice of pumpernickel bread with a lot of butter on it, and a salad with a very tart dressing. That's my pick. Some people will take leftover meat and put it in the soup and that's just fine too. In fact, you can use beef stock instead of chicken, if you prefer something heartier. You could even do a mushroom stock, and make it a completely vegetarian soup. That's a good t hing to know when you want to serve something hearty to a vegetarian friend.

And you know what? If you have those containers of leftover rice from the take out place, even brown rice, you can say "the hell with barley," and use that instead. But try barley. I guarantee once you do this, you'll start looking up "orzotto" , which is risotto made with barley instead of rice. And you may figure out what Sting's song means, although it hasn't worked for me yet.

BEETEN UP

If you're of a certain age, you remember that command: EAT YOUR BEETS!!!! In fact, you could probably substitute many other vegetables for beets, but that one stands out in many minds because of just how AWFUL those beets were. Out of a can, rarely a jar, they stared at you, with a color that looked like a bad wound, dripping juice, with a texture that just made you think, horrible things. Sometimes, I remember we would get them in waffle cuts, which I guess was supposed to make them more appetizing, but somehow, just made them worse

(By the way, when I think of the "EAT YOUR...." command, I wonder: did any of us ever see an adult actually eat a portion of whatever it was we were supposed to eat? And they wonder why we all wind up in therapy, or hating foods, or whatever. But just think about that if you're feeding kids: maybe it would be a good rule to never serve a child something you wouldn't eat yourself. I'm just thinking there are a lot of babyfood companies that would be out of business tomorrow).

I have many memories of such experiences, and while I've not gotten over some of them (no, I am NOT going to eat calves liver. EVER. ), beets have rehabilitated themselves.

Not without a struggle, as Paul Lynde used to say.

Beets are not the easiest vegetable to become fond of. Most of us see them as these forbidding , humongous lumps of dark, dark DARK matter in stores, and when we come back three months later, we recognize the same beets still sitting there. If you DID take them home, you probably tried to boil them, which resulted in quarts of dark red liquid, stains all over your kitchen, and a product that didn't taste much better than what we got when we were kids.

Fortunately, someone "got it," probably someone in Europe where beets are treated with reverence, and are eaten small. While I am no fan of "all things French," I find the idea of vacuum packed, peeled, cooked beets absolutely brilliant. Open the package, and all you need to do is use them.

But you need to know what to use them FOR. Maybe I can help.

One thing you should NOT use them for is shredded beet and walnut pie. Yes, it sounds gross, and you can ask yourself 'WHAT IN THE NAME OF GOD WAS HE THINKING?' Well, it LOOKED pretty. Shredded beets have a lovely, ruby color. And beets have the highest sugar content of any vegetable, except for onions. It SHOULD have worked. It didn't. One bite, and I was pulling out the Haagen Dasz for my guests.

So, no beet pies. And unfortunately, I've not seen the vacuum packed beets available here, so you're gonna have to cook them yourself. And if you get the small ones, they are ridiculously easy to prepare. Here's what you do.

Get SMALL ones. Whether they are the standard red ones, the beautiful golden ones (my favorites), or the striped chioggia beets, if they are too big, you will get frustrated. If they are smaller, and attached to their greens (NEVER let the farmer or store take those greens from you!), separate them from the greens, put them into a small baking dish with about a half inch of water, cover the dish tightly with tin foil, and put them in the oven at 400 for thirty minutes. After thirty minutes, take off the foil and insert a knife in one of them. Does it feel too hard? By too hard, do you think you would not want to feel that texture in your mouth? If the answer is no, take them out and let them cool for about fifteen minutes. If the answer is yes, let them bake another fifteen minutes and test them again.

When they're done, and cool, protect your hands with a cloth or paper, or something like that, and rub the skin off. It will just come away very easily. Try not to wash them, to keep the flavor. Now comes the fun part. If the beets are small, half them. If they're bigger, quarter them. You can cut them in round slices if you like as well. Put them in a bowl, and sprinkle them with some kind of acid. I really like white wine or champagne vinegar here, but you could use what you like. Orange juice or lemon juice, alone or with the vinegar, are also good. When beets are warm, their texture is such that they will pick up that acid, and it will bring out all that is good in them (Incidentally, regardless of the color, the flavor is the same, at least to me).

Now, what? You can eat them, just like this, as I sometimes do, on a plate with some other salad or salads, like shredded carrots with cayenne pepper and vinegar, or a cucumber sour cream salad, and some chunks of cheese. Or you can put them into a green salad, or a salad with some cheese. Goat cheese is a natural accompaniment for beets, as is sheep's cheese, if it's nice and sharp. One of the nicest dishes I ever had was a plate of golden beets, with a blue cheese, walnuts, slices of blood orange, and a drizzle of honey over the whole plate. You could use them in soups, pureeing them if you have enough of them, the possibilities are endless! You'll find tons of recipes on line: beets are a darling of the restaurant trade now, because they're cheap, and the flavor is dense, so you don't use a lot of them. And because prep cooks get paid dirt, they don't cost a lot to prepare, and because people like me are willing to pay 11.00 for a beet salad, you've got a money maker here. Gentle reader, however, now that you're onto the secret, you can save your money for more cocktails.

Now, what about those greens? Ever wonder what farmers do with that box of greens that they have behind the stand , collected from people who have said " tops off please?" They're selling them to a restaurant, because they're healthy, they're easy to cook, and they are better for you than spinach.

Hell, you paid for them, you may as well do something with them. DO know that you have to use beet greens no more than two days after you bought them, otherwise they will basically turn to mush in your fridge, begin to ferment, stink to the high heavens, and make you think a cat moved into your home and died. Well, maybe not that bad, but close.

You can use beet greens just about anywhere you would use FULL sized spinach. They don't substitute for baby spinach.

I use them just about all the time in the following. It's a recipe that Marian Burros put in the Times years ago, as a healthy pasta sauce that kids would eat. Well, I've "unhealthied" it by getting rid of the low fat ricotta (BLECH). And I've kicked up the flavor with some pepper and some sharp cheese. Go to it.

Take one or two bunches of beet greens, and pull the leaves off of the stems . This is really easy to do. Just grab half of the leaf and pull up. You'll get the hang of it quick. Then, cook them quickly in some boiling salted water. Maybe 3 minutes or so. Let them cool.

Then, get your food processor ready, put in a pound of GOOD ricotta, the greens, a pinch of salt, a grind or two of pepper, and let 'er rip. You'll get this lovely green sauce that you'll want to spoon out and eat right there. And you CAN do that. You can also pile it up on toast as a snack with drinks. BUT WAIT. Try grating some parmesan or some pecorino into it, and stir the whole thing up. Now, you've reached the Platonic form of "BEET GREENS." Boil up some pasta, toss the green sauce with it, and you have dinner.

Give beets another try. How many vegetables do you know that provide you with two, different meals from one veggie?

Difficult vegetables

Many years ago, I was a vegetarian. I gave it up for a lot of reasons, way to complicated to go into here, but one of the things I realized when I stopped, was that as a vegetarian, I didn't really eat many vegetables. You can be a vegetarian and live, and live quite well, on things like pasta and salad, and have tofu with peas, or corn on the cob, all kinds of things like that. But what about, well, VEGETABLES? You folks know what I mean.

In considering this question recently, and why so many people say they don't like vegetables generally, I realized two things. And they both have to do with ease of preparation.

If you go to an "average guy" kind of restaurant in New York, or, better, anywhere in the US except NY and SF, and maybe some other cities like that, or to one in Europe, you know, places where you don't want to spend a lot of money, you won't get many vegetables with your dinner. The reason why, as David Lebovitz pointed out on HIS blog, is that vegetables are very labor intensive. You can take a steak, pat it dry, salt it, put it in a pan and you're essentially done. Even a vegetable as well loved as green peas, however, takes work. Unless you're buying the frozen variety (which aren't bad, for the most part), you have to work. And when you get to some vegetables like beets, or kale, or turnips, or the subject of this piece, artichokes, there is labor involved. Labor increases the cost of food. And who wants to pay more for a plate of well cooked beets than for a steak (well, there ARE some of us, but we're talking globally here).

And at home, where let's face it, we're all looking at balancing jobs, obligations outside of work, cleaning the house, sleeping, and getting dinner on the table. When you look at the time commitment to preparing a bunch of carrots, with peeling, slicing and cooking, to opening that convenient box of frozen green beans and dumping them into a pot, for many people, it's a no brainer.


Bottom line is: "you gotta wanna" as George Carlin put it in describing mortal sin. And to "wanna", the vegetable has got to be pretty darn good.

I was thinking of all of this last week when I was emailing back and forth with an old friend, Karen. Karen was my minister for years. And a sermon she gave, over twenty years ago, still rings in my head. She said "having faith is like cooking vegetables. There's a lot of work involved, a lot of preparation, and you often wind up throwing out more than you keep. But when you're done, it's awfully good."

Brava, Karen. You hit it on the nose. And she used, as her example, one of the most labor intensive of all vegetables, artichokes.

I love artichokes. I could eat them every day. But honestly, I do not have the commitment to cook them every day. So I make them once in a while, expecially when Sandra B. the Queen of artichokes, sends me some from her family's farm. I' m going to describe how I make them here, and it DOES take some time. But I beg you to try them. This is one of the most satisfying recipes I will write about and I would love it if you tried them.

First though, let me give you some advice about buying and keeping artichokes. You have to keep in mind what they are: artichokes are unopened flower buds. You have to treat them accordingly. yes, they look sturdy, and scary, but they are thistle buds. You wouldn't buy a wrinkled, dried out looking flower in bud, and you wouldn't store it in a way to dry it out. Think that way with artichokes, and you'll be just fine.

Ok, onto cooking. Get four, nice big plump beautiful artichokes. Finding them may be the hardest thing you do for this recipe. When you have them, put them aside while you make stuffing. My stuffing calls for a couple of tablespoons of chopped thyme, and maybe some basil if you have it, as well as six cloves of garlic, chopped fine. Mix this up with about two cups of bread crumbs, the unflavored kind. Add some salt, two large eggs, and a glug (real scientific here) of olive oil and mix the whole thing together with clean hands. Taste it. Need more salt? Go ahead. Want some pepper? Absolutely. Now, get to work on the artichokes. Cut away the sharp ends of the leaves, all around the beast. Then, turn it upside down and bang it on the surface top to open it up a little. This is FUN. With your hands, a knife or anything that works, get that core out as far as you can. You'll be pulling out little furry things. Those are the thistle flowers. When you don't have anymore, then you rinse the artichoke out. As you do this, put them into a bowl of water, with some lemon juice or vinegar, to keep them from browning.

When you're done - and this is the part I love best (next to eating them), start shoving the stuffing into the leaves, into the center, everywhere. Try to estimate so that you have enough for all four, but if one gets more than its fair share, hey, you're the cook. When they're done, trim the bottoms so that they fit into a big, heavy pan, snuggled next to each other. Pour in about a cup of water and a quarter cup of olive oil, cover the pot tightly, turn on the heat to low, and go away for forty five minutes. Then, try to pull a leave from the outside. If it comes away nice and easy, they're done. If not, try in fifteen minutes. And so on.

These are too hot to eat right out of the pan, so you should let them sit for at least ten minutes. You can eat them hot, at room temperature (my favorite) or even cold right out of the fridge when you have the midnight munchies (NOT that I've ever done that....).

One of these is satisfying enough for a lunch, or a light dinner, or when you come home and just can't look at anything too serious for dinner. And if you make them on the weekend, you have them waiting for you. And of course, since you've made four.... well... didn't you just want to invite someone over for a quick bite?

And what of the week?

Well, sitting back and looking at the past week in the kitchen, I had a wonderful time. I'm quoting from the farmers' market list from last week:

And what of next week? Well, today at the market I picked up some leeks, a whole bunch of the end of the season heirloom tomatoes, which are a little underripe, one of those wonderful hybrids of cauliflower and broccoli, a "romesco", some carrots, two butternut squashes, a red cabbage.and a handful of Portuguese hot peppers. And what of them?


Indeed, what of them? Well, this was a week where schedules were all over the place. Neither of us had our regular Monday engagements, so we had fish night on Monday. I made the stuffed flounder I talked about in the piece on the Karlins, and Romesco with golden cauliflower, something that I picked up on Monday, because "I just couldn't resist it." After steaming it, and adding a little olive oil, it was perfect with the fish. And of course, salad.

Tuesday I had a make up Italian class, so I was home late. That night, we ate the butternut squash pasta casserole I talked about in the blog on my buddy Peter, with leftover romesco and cauliflower, because there was SO MUCH LEFT OVER (yes, from this blog, I'm trying to teach myself to use leftovers again).

Guy sang on Wednesday, so I served the garlic soup, with spinach that I picked up on Saturday, together with a GREAT pizza with the leeks, olives and mozzarella instead of romano. Really and truly great.

And Thursday night was as fun as I thought it would be: lamb chops, with a pomegranate glaze, and sweet and sour cabbage and the stuffed tomatoes, all of which I described below.

No, I didn't use everything. T here's a leftover butternut squash, and my carrots, and the hot peppers. I'm looking at carrot soup perhaps, or maybe that variation of vichyssoise with carrots. Not quite sure.

There's some heavy duty cooking going on this weekend, as we have our final monthly dinner on Sunday, and then the week after, the thanksgiving fete.

Of things to come: well, my workbuddy Sue has asked me to write about beets, and so it will be. I'll be posting a story about a man who I'm now realizing was very important in my life, my grandfather. A little piece on my friend Carol, who's coming to dinner on Sunday. And... there's a three pound box of chanterelle mushrooms in the fridge right now. If you like mushrooms, there is nothing like them. More evidence of "start with good, and you get good."

Stay tuned if you like.